CBS All Access has released the first-look images for its new Stephen King miniseries, The Stand. One of the author's most celebrated novels of all time, The Stand revolves around a pandemic caused by a man-made super virus (dubbed "Captain Trips") that nearly wipes out the entire human population. Even by King's standards, it's a dense and complicated work, and directors as prestigious as David Yates, Ben Affleck, and Scott Cooper all tried their hand at developing a movie adaptation in the 2010s before stepping away. After that, the project eventually found its way to CBS and was turned into a miniseries for their streaming service.
Created by Josh Boone (who was also attached to adapt The Stand as a film at one point) and Benjamin Cavell and show-run by Cavell and Taylor Elmore (who previously worked together on Justified), The Stand will stream on CBS All Access sometime later this year. In the build-up to the show's premiere, the first images of the cast have made their way online, highlighting the various survivors of the pandemic in the story... along with the mysterious forces for good and evil whom they rally around in the aftermath.
Vanity Fair has the exclusive on the first photos from The Stand, which highlight but a fraction of the miniseries' star-studded cast. Among those pictured below are Jovan Adepo (Overlord) and Heather Graham (Angie Tribeca) as Larry Underwood and Rita Blakemoor, two of the few survivors of the pandemic; Odessa Young (A Million Little Pieces) as a young pregnant woman named Frannie Goldsmith; Owen Teague (IT) as Frannie's odd neighbor, Harold Lauder, who harbors an unrequited crush on her and tries to protect/control her; Nat Wolff (Paper Towns) as the recently-jailed criminal Lloyd Henreid; and Alexander Skarsgård and Whoopi Goldberg as the charismatic, demonic Randall Flagg - an antagonist featured in multiple King novels - and righteous, supposedly 108-year old Mother Abagail.
Interestingly, The Stand was previously adapted as a miniseries for ABC in 1994, with King writing the teleplay. It was generally well-received, though obviously limited by its budget ($6 million per episode, which was a lot back then) and content restrictions for television at the time. By comparison, this new miniseries has more money behind it (as the first-look images illustrate) and will even include a new ending written by King. It's also an unexpectedly timely adaptation, arriving in a year when the coronavirus pandemic is raging on in the real-world. King acknowledged these unsettling parallels during his interview with Vanity Fair, and noted the unexpected popularity of movies and TV shows which deal with pandemics right now (like the film Contagion).
With its themes about people overcoming terrible grief, pain, and loss to work together and survive (even as others give in to their darkest impulses), The Stand could also be the perfect addition to the ever-growing body of Stephen King adaptations for these times. It only just managed to wrap filming before the pandemic forced movie and TV production to shut-down earlier this year, so King fans shouldn't have to wait too long to re-experience this story on the small screen, either. It'll be all the more fascinating to see how newcomers respond to King's genre-blending epic in this format, in light of everything that's happened in real-life over the last two months alone.
The Stand streams on CBS All Access later this year.
Source: Vanity Fair